And I was like, Emilio? Emilioooooooooooo!!

[Emilio]

30. Catholic Mass


I understand it better
with the help of eye. Blindly
I kneel, sit, stand, kneel, sit.
In its rhythm I find its song, eye.
And my mouth sings.
And I try to be the parishioner
that God wants me to be. I ask, eye,
which side of the tongue should I take the host?
I ask eye, which side of the eye
should take the Sunday skirt legs.
And I listen to eye’s rolling metaphors:
The every car drives at different speeds, eye,
the aging house of the body, eye,
the Tithe 10% and God will give it back tenfold.
I hear it so much I begin to believe eye
must read from a personal bible.
And I try to understand eye. Why, eye, has nobody else
lived in a whale’s mouth for three days?
Why, eye, has nobody else lived to 800 years?
Why, eye, has snake only talked once, in history?
And I stare at Jesus’ rib, eye, and still
I just want to be the parishioner
that God wants me to be. And after mass,
when eye presents himself to me,
in robes, in ropes, in aspergil,
I imagine that when God comes,
flowers bloom.

[prokopton]

See? That wasn't so tough now was it. 30 done with 2 days to spare.
Catholic Mass was interesting, I have to read it carefully to sort out the eye
but you told it right. Aye, that you did. heh.
The Godzilla egg story is cute. Squirrel, Tarantula, you got into a rhythm at the end.
and you're done.
Congratulations.

ffGoe

[Arlene]

Emilio, thank you for dropping by so often to leave lovely, cheering thoughts. Squirrel, Egg, this last, I'll call it 'eye' to go with your 'ear,' just wonderful...simply written but all so complex. Huge pleasure reading your work again. xo A.

[Donner]

Hi, Emilio,

I'll add my praise of "Floor". A delicate balancing act, very good. Then each from "Doorbell" to "Egg", are wry, concise observations - the squirrel freezes, moves, freezes, moves; the doorbell, a box on a door on another door; the tarantula web overkill; a dangerous egg. Good work this month.

Donner

[Julie]

"Children don’t dirty carpets.
They reveal it."

Nice.

"making a playbook of the living room,"

Nice!

"to drop one cherry
into every lonely mouth."

Lovely.



"I vowed I would never fight myself into a fuck on a mountain.
I became that cowboy with a cowboy in a tent on the mountain."

LOVE. I don't tend to be a fan of ghazals, honestly, but taking them bit by bit pleases me.



"Sunset makes a knife of the ridgeline, to turn day into night; it
cuts the sky at its seams with the serrated edge of the mountain."

That's pretty.


"Jesus once showed me the ingredients for a rainbow: One yard
sale, sunlight to dish back to the sky, antique glassware plates."

Nice!


"A therapist once inquired as to the source of my depression. I
imagined one long life dining with one big fork and one little plate."

You could give lessons on the effective use of adjectives.



"To prove in the Divine, I hid the sound of sunflowers in a crypt.
Jesus listened hard for the flowers, everywhere except the crypt."

!!!


"Fish" is absolutely charming. (Though bettas are actually air breathers, so it's not desperation that send him to the surface.)

"being pulled like the tail of a lobster."

!!! That's spectacular.